Our Work in Tanzania

Our Role

In January 2013, at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the President of United Republic of Tanzania and the Minister of Agriculture expressed interest in forging a partnership with the 2030 Water Resources. Shortly after signing a Memorandum of Understanding later that same year, together we launched a partnership with the goal to support, compliment and strengthen the existing efforts of the Government of Tanzania to (i) develop and achieve a water secure future, (ii) enable a sustainable growth track for economic and social development as well as environmental protection.

Following a 2030 WRG hosted kick-off workshop in November 2013, we have since advanced our analytic support with a Hydro-Economic Overview published in August 2014. Our work has also contributed Tanzania’s development goals by establishing a Multi-Stakeholder Partnership.

To date, a management board has been established under the patronage of the Ministry of Water and Chaired by the Prime Minister’s Office. A number of private sector, civil society and government ministries are represented on the management board. Under the management board, technical working groups have been established across the thematic areas of water efficiency, water storage and source protection, and cross-sector collaboration. Broad consultations and ongoing scoping work is being supported to help develop the projects and initiatives prioritized by the working groups. The initial focus has been on priority catchments in the Rufiji and Pangani basins, where water supply-demand gap issues are greatest, as well as on agricultural water use, a major priority given the importance of agriculture for the Tanzanian economy.

Through the 2030 WRG Tanzania partnership, stakeholders are addressing these challenges via the development of targeted catchment level water stewardship and agricultural water efficiency initiatives. These priorities were endorsed by the partnership management board in July 2015 and stakeholders have already refined their broad priorities into a series of tangible partnership initiatives.

Results

From an initial discussion based on the Hydro-Economic Analysis report, the 2030 WRG Tanzania Partnership is now working through working groups to take forward the debate and practical action across the following areas: (i) water efficiency, (ii) water storage and source protection, and (iii) cross-sector collaboration.

The 2030 WRG Tanzania Partnership identified the need for further in-depth hydro-economic analysis in priority basins such as those with expectations of significant new economic growth. 2030 WRG therefore commissioned AMEC to further their initial hydro-economic analysis based on two key criteria: the private sector potential, and both the readiness and capacity of the Basin Water Boards (BWB) toward playing an active role in any future discussion and implementation. The executive summary of the document regarding the prioritizing of water basins for intervention is public.

Through 2015, stakeholders have moved quickly to refine the broad priorities into a first series of tangible partnership initiatives. These include:
1. The development and launch of the Greater Ruaha Restoration and the Joint Kilimanjaro Water Stewardship Campaign. These two public, private, civil society catchment-level interventions are intended to reduce the water gap in these important basins, but will also demonstrate models for effective multi-stakeholder water resource management which can be replicated elsewhere in the country. Both initiatives will be launched in early 2016.
2. Design and launch innovative financing instruments for water-efficient smallholder agriculture. Smallholder irrigation in Tanzania is either highly inefficient or undeveloped. Basic water storage and irrigation equipment, such as tanks and small scale drip kits, are readily available and offer potential attractive returns, but farmers often lack access to finance, skills, markets to justify adoption of new water-productive technologies and approaches. In response, 2030 WRG is bringing together a range of stakeholders to develop financing solutions that will enable Tanzanian smallholder farmers to increase their productive use of water.
3. Development of a National Water Resources Information Center. At a more basic level, a major challenge exists in accessing water data and information in Tanzania, which can lead to poor investment decisions by both the public and private sector, as well as the unnecessary duplication of research, analysis and data collection efforts. Through the 2030 WRG partnership, this barrier will be addressed through the collective development of a national, open-source, online water resources information center, with a target start date in 2016, linked to discussions surrounding the development of a National Center of Excellence for the water sector.

The priority for 2016 will be to fully develop the initiatives described above. Project concepts related to industrial and urban water management are also expected to be added later in the year.

CONTACTS

About Us

The 2030 Water Resources Group is a unique public-private-civil society collaboration. We facilitate open, trust-based dialogue processes to drive action on water resources reform in water stressed countries in developing economies. The ultimate aim of such reforms and actions is to close the gap between water demand and supply by the year 2030.

Our global partners include bilateral agencies and governments (Sida, SDC and the Government of Hungary), private companies (Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Grundfos, Dow, Ab InBev), development banks (IFC, the World Bank, African Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank), INGOs and IGPs (UNDP, GGGI, GWP, the Forum, BRAC and IUCN). The 2030 WRG was launched in 2008 at the World Economic Forum and has been hosted by The World Bank Group since 2012.